Thora Wrote:If the captions are not for clarification, I'm curious to know what they are for? Isn't it because news contains vocabulary that is not used in every day life and kanji are given b/c the word may not be obvious from the sound alone?

Maybe that's one of the purpose of subs in some cases but I don't think that's the only one as they are not limited to difficult technical vocabulary. I think they are mostly there to help with the listening as they seem to focus on things like interviews shot on location for example. The 100% clear professional narrator's voice is rarely subbed. I can see how that would be useful if you are watching TV in a noisy environment or don't want to turn up the volume for some reason. They can also simply serve as an attention grabbing trick.

That's just my guess anyway.

FutureBlues Wrote:Which is why a ton of Japanese television programs, from the news to comedy plaster huge Japanese subtitles over everything because even natives would have trouble piecing together some topics without anything to distinguish the homophones.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?...802AAOz15Y

QuackingShoe Wrote:The most straightforward example with Japanese has always been 円, which is simply えん, but which we perceived as 'yen' in the same way that you perceived あく as 'yaku', because of our expectations from our native language and it's orthographic system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_yen#Etymology

Codexus Wrote:Maybe that's one of the purpose of subs in some cases but I don't think that's the only one as they are not limited to difficult technical vocabulary. I think they are mostly there to help with the listening as they seem to focus on things like interviews shot on location for example.

Makes perfect sense. I wasn't even thinking about man-on-the-street interviews - where noise, dialect, diction could interfere.

Re the Portuguese role in the "en" to "yen": This apparently also explains why "Nippon" is "Japan" in other languages (something about the Portuguese pronounciation )

[later correction: pls ignore that last bit of misinformation]

Actually, Nihon got the name Japan from from the first traders who heard of Japan from the Chinese and other islands in the area, Chipangu (R?běngu?).

You're just filled with all sorts of interesting facts Mr./Ms. Tobberoth